3. The working class today - Maral Jefroudi

Outline of the introduction

The working class today - Maral Jefroudi

What is the working class? The notion of class in Marx and Marxism

Sociological or a political category? “free worker” / wage-labour / explotation/ class antagonism/ class relations class in production/ class in circulation/ class in reproduction/ the middle class?

The changes in the class composition of the working class during the late 20th Century


The putting-out system/ industrial revolution/ taylorism- Fordism/ “the precariat?”

The problem of class consciousness and intersecting identities

Class in itself/ class for itself/ praxis/ class struggle/ organization/ hegemony/

Reading Materials

• Readings: Excerpts from capital Volume 1&2
• Hobsbawm the Age of Revolution
• 1991 world congress part Crisis in the workers' movement and new struggles Europe 1992
• Bourgeois plans and workers’ perspectives, Charlie Post interview
• Excerpts from The Leninist Theory of Organisation (1970) by Ernest Mandel
• Bourgeois ideology and proletarian class consciousness & Proletarian class struggle and proletarian class consciousness
• “Class Unity, the Working-Class United Front and Allies of the Proletariat.” Fourth International, an extract from the resolution on Europe of the 1979 world congress of the fourth revolution reprinted in Unity and Strategy.